The Charge

I want to believe. No really, I do!

The Case

Ancient Aliens. Well, there you go. The title of this 2010 History
Channel series—really five two-hour documentaries on different aspects of
the same subject, using many of the same talking head experts, with the
precursor two-hour stand-alone documentary Ancient Aliens: Chariots, Gods and
Beyond added as a bonus feature—pretty much gives the game away.
You're not getting evidence of ancient brilliant engineers, or ancient
leapers-forward in human knowledge, or ancient rock stars. You're getting
aliens, and old ones at that. If you're a Fox Mulder-level believer, this will
probably fall into the "well, duh the Nazca Lines were made with
alien assistance!!!" category. If you're a skeptic, you'll only be
entertained by the massive leaps in logic necessary to accept some of the
conclusions herein. Either way, you pretty much know what you're getting:
pseudoscience, and lots of it.

Of course that doesn't mean that this series isn't entertaining. Far from
it—Ancient Aliens is well-produced, and largely free of the usual
filler/padding technique you often see on the History Channel (namely, taking
five minutes after a commercial break to repeat and recap things you just saw
minutes ago before the commercial break). Some of the theorists are downright
sensible, and even the loony ones (including the Elvis of the
aliens-have-walked-among-us crowd, Erich von Daniken) are entertainingly
illogical. Combine that with a nice anamorphic transfer and a decent sound mix,
and you've got a good value package for the pseudoscientists in your life.

I don't want to bash these folk too much, as they clearly are well-meaning
and earnest in their beliefs. But man, do they make leaps of logic. You
have to admit that many of the things posited to be "evidence"
of past alien visitation defy explanation given our current knowledge of history
and past cultures. For example, the aforementioned Nazca Lines: giant linear
formations and pictographs made on the floor of the high Peruvian desert plains
that can only be properly seen from the air—made, apparently, by a people
who lacked technical and engineering knowledge of the wheel, let alone flight.
We can't explain how or why ancient Peruvian tribespeople made pictures you can
only properly see from an aircraft. Therefore, it must have been aliens. Did you
see the leap there? Why must it be aliens? Where is the proof? Yes, it's
highly unlikely that this primitive high desert culture had, say, hot air
balloons…but it's even more unlikely that extraterrestrials helped
out. We don't have evidence of either of those things, therefore neither of them
is currently a supportable hypothesis. But that's the kind of
"science" that's on display here.

But let's assume, arguendo, that aliens did visit the Earth and help
build the pyramids and put up the statues on Easter Island. If you think about
it—if you really think about it—doesn't that mean that the
aliens were…well, jerks? It's a well-known fact that the ancient Egyptians
did not use the wheel. In fact, that alone is one of the pieces of evidence that
is used to support an alien theory: how could the Egyptians have moved so much
heavy stone without wheeled transportation? It's a valid question. So say they
had some aliens helping out with gravity beams. Well…why didn't the aliens
ALSO teach the Egyptians some useful information that would have helped their
society greatly? Like, say, telling them about the wheel, or about plumbing, or
about how to irrigate cropland using levees and dams? It's all well and good to
help out with the pyramids, but wouldn't a flush toilet have helped out even
more? I find it hard to believe that benevolent aliens would have the Egyptians
build the Giza pyramids to serve as gigantic power stacks producing microwave
radiation (an actual theory) while still letting them poop in holes in the
ground. Unless, of course, they were jerks.

So ultimately, that's my problem with Ancient Aliens. I'd love to
believe that friendly big-eyed, big-headed aliens came to Earth and helped our
ancestors build great monuments that have stood the test of time. But to do so,
I also have to accept that said aliens were basically selfish dicks who gave us
juuuuuust enough information to get what they wanted, then split
without a trace, leaving us to wallow in our own filth and ignorance.

But I still enjoyed it! The mysteries that are supposedly explained by
ancient alien visitation are still interesting mysteries, regardless of
the leaps in logic applied to them. There are a lot of things out there that
just defy easy explanation. Who knows—maybe aliens did visit the
Earth. I can't say they did; I also can't say they didn't. This documentary
series doesn't have that problem—and if you agree with them, there's a lot
here to love. But it's definitely worth a look, if you have an interest in the
subject, and there's a good deal of stuff on this set for you to absorb.

The Verdict

I don't have a verdict one way or the other right now. I think I did a couple
of days ago, though. Did aliens visit Earth and implant a chip that caused me
to lose my verdict memory??? Tune in to season two of Ancient
Aliens…